As we leave our ‘milestone’ issue 50 behind us, we’d like to thank our readers for all the positive comments and constructive criticism received over the last ten years. Our electronic letterbox is full of encouraging comments, best wishes and inspiring ideas.

We start this issue by inviting you to put on your walking shoes and join us on a ‘type tour’ of London, as Caroline Archer guides us through some of the capital’s typographic treasures.

From the Far East we welcome Fritz Park who, in his article about the Korean alphabet ‘Hangul’, advocates it’s cultural importance in establishing and maintaining a national identity.

Through its richly decorated and graphically vibrant pages, Berthold’s Hebrew Type Catalogue, from 1924, celebrates Hebrew and Yiddish culture. Steven Heller explains the history of this now scarce publication.

Back from the first biannual Codex Foundation International Book Fair in San Francisco, David Jury, replete with some fantastic samples, fills us in about the contemporary fine press and artist book scene.

The Thackeray Alphabet book, first published in 1929, is a little gem amongst children’s books. Charmingly illustrated and written by William Makepeace Thackeray it’s appeal spans across all generations. Kerry William Purcell explains why.

To round off the features, Paul Rennie reminds us about the internationally renowned and influential graphic designer, Tom Eckersley, focussing on his involvement with the LCP (London College of Printing).

Finally it is our last lexicon in the series of type designers, compiled and written, from its conception, by Mike Daines. The Baseline lexicon has proved so popular, for professionals, academics and students of visual communication alike, that we are planning to develop the series further.

Hans Dieter Reichert

Hebrew was prohibited in Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, effectively curtailing a rich tradition of Jewish publishing. As a result those scholars and authors who could, emigrated to England, France, and The United States, while a particularly larger number also resettled in Germany (in part owing to the shared linguistics of German and Yiddish). As Berlin’s Jewish community swelled in the 1920s, the city became a wellspring for Jewish book and periodical publishing with various ambitious endeavours. Notably the eight volume Encyclopedia Judaica (the last volume was published in 1933, the year Hitler was appointed German Chancellor). Another impressive series, the 12 volume Weltgeschichte des Jüdischen Volkes, sold over 100,000 copies. In 1931 Salaman Schocken founded the prestigious Schocken Verlag. A leading Jewish publisher who produced fiction and non-fiction books, as well as an acclaimed annual Almanach of Jewish literature. The firm released over 225 titles until 1938 when forced into exile after the Krystal Nacht pogrom (night of broken glass). (Salaman had already left Germany in 1934 for a new life in Palestine, leaving his manager in charge until they could publish no longer. Later in the 1980s, over twenty years after Salaman died, Schocken became an imprint of the American publisher, Pantheon Books)…

Steven Heller

The social changes that happened in Britain during the 1960s are, even now, the subject of political recrimination and moral panic. The decade was punctuated by a series of landmark events in Britain – the Chatterley trial, the Profumo scandal, the World Cup and ‘summer of love’.

These cultural milestones were, even then, picked out against a counterpoint of counter-cultural experimentation. This emerging counter-culture was linked to a transformation in youth culture, that manifested itself as a general disregard for convention expressed through loud music, sexual permissiveness and some recreational drug use.

The emergence of an identifiably distinct form of youth culture that was wary of the cultural superiority and complacent moral values of its elders was an unexpected consequence of educational reform and the expansion of higher education in Britain…

Dr. Paul Rennie